The world is changing… And you can contribute to make sure it is changing towards the right direction. How? By making your voice heard. By telling your story. By sharing your experiences. By contributing to the current discussions and debates.
For that, you have many storytelling tools at your disposal: blogging, vlogging, social media… and podcasts.
If you ever thought about launching your podcast but were afraid about the costs of it, I got you covered.
In this article, I am going to explain to you how you can create your own podcast free of charge, or almost. Why almost? Well, because even if the solutions I am going to give you don’t cost money, you will still invest your time and energy in them… And time and energy are not free, they also have their value.
What do you need to create a podcast? Your beginner’s starting kit
You will see that you already have the majority of the tools I will advise you to use.
You need:
A great topic, ie your story or something you are passionate about or something you have experience in
A name for your podcast
A computer, a tablet or a smartphone
A headset with a microphone
A hosting platform for your podcast
A visual for your podcast’s cover
A great topic
It is important to spend some time on the topic of your podcast.
What do you want to talk about?
Why and why is this topic important to you?
What will be the red thread that you will run through your episodes?
How do you want to communicate about it?
Who will be interested in listening to it?
What kind of action do you want people to do after listening to your episodes? What is the objective of your podcast: to raise awareness on a topic, to share an experience, to testify, to challenge people?
It is important to spend time working on the concept of your podcast. You will brainstorm different ideas, different angles of approach until you finally find what resonates with you.
From this brainstorming session, you should come up with a tagline, a sentence describing your podcast.
Cost: your time and energy
A name for your podcast
Once you have your topic and the general concept of your podcast, it’s time to give it a name.
For that, you can work with keywords and notions in direct link with your podcast’s concept until, once again, you come up with something resonating with you.
And if you hesitate between different names, why not asking people on social media to choose the one they prefer? You can organise polls to include them in the process.
Make sure that the final name you will choose for your podcast really reflects your main idea and message. As it is generally by the name that people will choose, or not, to listen to your podcast.
Cost: your time and energy
A computer, a tablet or a smartphone
You need some electronics to be able to record your episodes. Start with what you have. No need to invest into something complicated.
Cost: FREE
A headset with a microphone
Again, I am sure you already have one, just to listen to music. So, again, no need to invest into something fancy.
Cost: FREE
A hosting platform
To make sure that your episodes will reach your audience, you need to host them on a podcast hosting platform.
Once you upload the episodes into it, the hosting platform will dispatch them to the main podcast directories, ie Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and so on.
The podcast hosting platform is your intermediary between you and your audiences as you can’t directly publish to the podcast directories.
You can find many hosting platforms on the market. I, myself, started with Buzzsprout as they have a 90 days free of charge offer. However, after 90 days, if you don’t switch to a paid plan, your episodes are deleted from the hosting platform and from the podcast directories.
I recently discovered a completely free hosting platform, Anchor.fm powered by Spotify. And, from what I could read and heard about them, it is pretty good. And, no, your podcast won’t be just on Spotify, it will be available on the other main podcast directories.
Cost: FREE with Anchor.fm
A visual for your podcast’s cover
If you ever listened to podcasts, I’m sure you noticed that they all feature a sort of profile picture. This is what we call the podcast’s cover.
And, here, no need to be a graphic designer and to use complicated tools, as Photoshop or InDesign, for that. Just use Canva. The free version is very complete and you can access a wide library of templates.
Cost: FREE with Canva
As you could see, you don’t need to invest money in order to launch your podcast. The main investment you will be doing is a time and energy investment.
This was a beginner starting kit gathering the main steps and tools you need to have to start podcasting.
If you feel confident with it, not finding it that difficult to implement, let’s jump to the intermediate starting kit.
What do you need to create a podcast? Your intermediate’s starting kit
The intermediate’s starting kit is basically the beginner’s starting kit with more actions to implement.
You can perfectly start with the beginner’s starting kit and, once you are more confident, you can add the actions of the intermediate’s kit.
You need:
A great topic, ie your story or something you are passionate about or something you have experience in
A name for your podcast
A computer, a tablet or a smartphone
A headset with a microphone
A hosting platform for your podcast
A visual for your podcast’s cover
A soundtrack
A recording and editing programme
An audiogram
A soundtrack
Having a nice music will reinforce the messages of your podcast and will contribute to the atmosphere of it. It will make your podcast more appealing to your audience.
You will use the music for the introduction, the transitions between different parts of your episode and for the outro, or conclusion of your episode.
For that, you can buy some soundtracks, but you can also use royalty free music.
Here is an article from Buzzsprout listing different website where you can find free music for your podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/blog/free-music-for-podcasts
You might end up spending quite a lot of time listening and finally choose the right music for your podcast, just saying. So make sure you dedicate some time for that.
Cost: FREE, your time and energy
A recording and editing programme
You can completely record your podcast directly from your phone or tablet or computer. But, depending on your recording environment or if you want to add soundtracks, you might want to do some modifications to your track to suppress background noises, parts of your episodes where you stammered, when your cat or dog actively participated and so on.
For that, you will need a more professional recording and editing programme.
The 2 free recording and editing programmes I recommend are:
GarageBand (Mac only)
Audacity (Mac and Windows)
Cost: FREE, your time and energy to get used to these programmes
An audiogram
What is an audiogram? An audiogram is basically a sound wave that you can use to promote your podcast on social media or if you want your podcast on YouTube.
Used on social media, audiograms are a great tool to tease your audience with an extract of your episode.
As for hosting platforms, you have many websites offering to create audiograms or sound waves.
The one I am using is Headliner. The free version includes 4 audio waves without watermarks free of charge. After 4, you can still create audiograms but the Headliner watermarks will show.
Cost: FREE with Headliner
So, you see, it’s not that complicated or costly to launch your podcast! You now have no more excuse to make your voice heard and tell your story! Just start!
I hope that this article helped you to see that you already had everything to get started in podcasting, free of charge.
I am ready to help you to make your podcast adventure the best one of your entrepreneur’s journey! Check out my podcast launching offers and my podcast management offers for more details how to do it.
And, if you have any question or doubt, why not booking a call with me to discuss your challenges and expectations?
See you soon!
Cath @MyMarketingToolbox